


The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

by ProfessorFlimflam



Category: Holby City
Genre: Berena Appreciation Week, Day 1, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 08:50:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11528793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorFlimflam/pseuds/ProfessorFlimflam
Summary: Lou doesn't say much, but she notices things. She notices Bernie Wolfe, and she notices how well she and Serena work together. In fact, she kind of ships them...





	The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of #berena appreciation week over on tumblr (where I am also professorflimflam).
> 
> Day 1 prompt: when did you first start to ship them?
> 
> I'm letting Lou answer this one ;-)

People tell me things.

I mean, they tell me a lot of things they don’t tell other people, because they know I don’t gossip, but they tell me things without realising it, too. They forget I’m there, you see. I’m quiet, I don’t chat much, and I've got a reputation of just keeping my head down and getting on with the job. Doesn’t mean I don't hear things, though. Doesn’t mean I'm not interested. People tell me things, I notice things, I put two and two together.

Everyone noticed her, the first time she came to the hospital. Well, you couldn’t miss it, really - the military transport, the meatheads that brought her in, the fuss that everyone was making over the great Bernie Wolfe. I hadn’t heard of her, but Fletch told me she was a pretty big name in her field, a real hot shot trauma specialist, which made sense - that's who you'd want on your staff when you were under daily threat from mortar attacks, drone strikes and IEDs. Only of course, she was the one who'd been blown up this time. I heard she was quite something on the ward: stopped the consultants squabbling and basically drew up her own treatment plan.

I did some of her post-op wound care, so I spent a fair bit of time with her. I liked her, actually - I liked her a lot. She didn’t give much away - bit like me, I suppose, but she made it easy to look after her. She did all the right things - she ate well for recovery without complaining about the awful hospital food; took her physio without complaint, and rested properly when she was told to. Army discipline, I suppose, but I think it was her own way as well: she wanted to get back on her feet as soon as she could. She told me about the IED, about the flight home: she had learned since then about the roadside emergency treatment she’d received, though she had no memory of it, and she told me about that, too, and though it didn’t change my treatment of the wounds, it was good to know how they had been treated.

In unguarded moments, she told me about her family: the husband who came to see her in hospital, held her hand but who, to me, looked like a stranger; her children, who I think came to visit, though never while I was on shift. She was proud of her children, talked about her supportive husband, but there was a sense of distance, almost formality, in the way she talked about them, and that told me things, too.

When she talked about her colleagues, her comrades, it seemed as though they were her real family, and when she asked after the colleague who had been caught up in the explosion, I heard something in her voice, saw something in her eyes that wasn't there when she talked about, or even to her husband. So yes, she told me a lot. Some of it she meant to tell me: much of it she didn’t. It didn't make any difference to me: she was a patient - a favourite one, I’ll admit, but just a patient, all the same. And when she came back in a new capacity, first to Darwin and Keller, then down here in AAU, none of that was relevant to what she was doing, any more than my private life mattered to anyone else. All that mattered to me was that she was a good colleague and, when she came down here, a good boss - and she was both of those.

She was so confident, so knowledgeable, and so reliable - she never dropped the ball, always followed up, remembered details that other consultants wouldn’t bother with. She brought a new kind of energy to the ward, and though she ruffled feathers a bit with her way of forging ahead as though she were answerable to no-one, I think everyone respected and liked her. She showed us new techniques; how to do things in ways that hadn’t occurred to us, and taught us to work, quite literally, like a military unit - we almost came to look forward to major incidents just to see her in her element.

But the best thing she did for us, the greatest change she made, was the way she worked with, not against, Ms Campbell. They were so different in their approaches, and there were fireworks from time to time, but their skills and philosophies seemed complementary rather than contradictory, and they sparked off each other in a way I’d never seen before on this ward. Ms Campbell always seemed to be butting heads with other consultants, always had to prove herself to them, but there was none of that with Ms Wolfe. That they admired each other's work was obvious, and to see them together in theatre was like watching a well choreographed dance.

Even the first day that Ms Wolfe returned to Holby City as an employee, they fell into an easy companionship that you wouldn’t quite believe of either of them. Oh, I know, Ms Campbell’s always friendly to a fault with new people, but as I passed them in the car park that morning, there was none of her usual flirting, that calculating look that says “What are you after, how are you a threat to me, and what can I get from you.” Instead, there seemed to be an instant rapport, a ready made friendship, and they seemed to fall into step with each other as easily as though they could hear the same music.

I’ll tell you when it was, the moment I realised just how good they were together. Serena gave us some starchy, po-faced speech about the trauma unit, and as we all drifted back to work afterwards, I saw Ms Wolfe lean in close so their shoulders were touching, and heard her say, “Great speech, Fräulein." I don’t know what the nickname was all about, but seeing that little exchange, and Ms Campbell rolling her eyes self-deprecatingly, I thought, _Well, well, look at that - I knew they were friends, but I do believe Ms Campbell’s actually met her equal at last_. No hint of malice or spite, just gentle teasing and warm friendship. And knowing what I knew, or at least suspected, about Ms Wolfe, and knowing how wholeheartedly Serena Campbell throws herself into things, I'd have to say that that was the moment I really started to - what did you call it? - ship them.

Wasn’t wrong, was I?


End file.
